US to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in 2021

Reuters reported on April 7 that in a 12-page summary, which was extracted from the above-mentioned top secret reports and widely released, the White House acknowledged that it had learned many lessons from the US withdrawal from the Southwest Asian country. The White House also partly blamed US military and intelligence officials for their flawed assessments, failing to anticipate the Taliban's advance and the capabilities of the Afghan security forces at that time. Accordingly, until May 2021, the Western-backed Kabul government was still assessed as "not coming under serious pressure until late 2021 after the US withdrawal."

The White House asserted that the Biden administration had done everything it could, while criticizing the previous US administration of Donald Trump for creating an unfavorable context for the withdrawal process. The peace agreement that Washington signed with the Taliban in February 2020 was accused of putting the successor Biden administration in a deadlock. “The Trump administration set a withdrawal date before the end of its term but did not outline any implementation plan,” the summary emphasized.

According to AFP, the White House affirmed that the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is an inevitable scenario. After more than 20 years of effort, more than 2,000 billion USD and building an Afghan army of more than 300,000 people, the fact that the Taliban still "quickly and easily" controlled Afghanistan shows that "no scenario - except for increasing the long-term presence of the US military - can change what happened". "President Biden is not willing to commit another generation of Americans to a war that should have ended long ago", the summary stated.

When President Biden decided to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, there were concerns that the move would weaken US alliances or put Washington at a disadvantage internationally, the White House said. But the White House asserted that “the opposite has happened,” with the US standing on the world stage “growing stronger” and US alliances “becoming stronger than ever.”

Commenting on the summary released by the White House, CNN quoted a spokesperson for former President Trump as accusing the Biden administration of trying to mislead the American public “about the disastrous withdrawal process in Afghanistan that directly took the lives of many Americans and encouraged terrorists.” In a statement, Republican Representative Michael McCaul, who is also the Chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that the Biden administration must “be held accountable for the massive failures in planning and implementing the withdrawal.” AP quoted Republican Senator Tom Cotton as assessing the US withdrawal from Afghanistan as “an absolute disaster,” emphasizing that “blaming others will not change that.”

According to AP, the war in Afghanistan is considered the longest war in American history, claiming the lives of more than 2,400 American soldiers while more than 66,000 Afghan soldiers and police have also died. President Biden affirmed that the US withdrew all troops because it had achieved its goals when sending troops to Afghanistan, which were to weaken the international terrorist network al-Qaeda and prevent attacks similar to the tragedy of September 11, 2001 against the US. AFP said the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was completed on August 30, 2021, shocked the American people and Washington's allies when the Taliban quickly defeated the forces of the Western-backed Kabul government in just a few weeks, forcing US soldiers to carry out the largest airlift operation in US history to evacuate more than 120,000 US citizens, allies and Afghans out of the Southwest Asian country in just a few days.

HOANG VU

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